The storms of Saturn ripple through the frame of a black-and-white close-up captured by the Cassini orbiter on Christmas Eve and received on Earth on Wednesday.

"Close-up" is a relative term: When this picture was taken, Cassini was 441,028 miles (709,766 kilometers) away from Saturn, or almost twice the distance between Earth and the moon. Also, "black-and-white" doesn't tell the whole story: The picture was captured through the wide-angle camera's CB2 red filter, which brings out more of the variations in the cloud tops of the planet's atmosphere. For an even more dramatic illustration of the effect, compare the photos accompanying this report about Saturn's north polar vortex.

So what's black and white and red all over? This picture answers the riddle.